The Protector (Chinese: 威龍猛探) is a 1985 Hong Kong–American action film directed by James Glickenhaus and starring Jackie Chan, Danny Aiello, and Roy Chiao.
The original Glickenhaus cut only received a sparse release in North America, while Chan's edited version was a moderate success in Asia.
During a bar robbery gone awry, NYPD officer Billy Wong kills the perpetrators but loses his partner Michael, drawing the ire of his superiors.
The first involves a woman named May-Fong Ho, who now works as a dancer under the alias of Sally after Ko had her father, one of his business associates, murdered.
[2]: 176 The film was rebooted when Golden Harvest's head of production Tom Gray reached out to director James Glickenhaus based on the success of The Exterminator.
An avid motorsports fan, Glickenhaus owned the "Manhattan Express" powerboat seen in the East River chase, although only a replica was detonated at the end of it.
[7] For his part, the director was put off by Chan's repeated trips to Japan to promote his musical endeavors, which forced some day sequences to be shot during the night.
[8] Whereas Hong Kong had already begun breaking up fight scenes into shorter segments offering curated camera angles, Glickenhaus remained dead set on the use of a traditional master shot.
On the other hand, the American, who favored a gritty atmosphere, looked down on the visual artifices employed by his Hong Kong peers to amp up the action, such as undercranking, which he refused to do.
[6]: 317–320 The star recalled phoning Golden Harvest executive Leonard Ho and threatening to walk in hopes of having the director relieved from his duties, only to be told that his contract was ironclad.
[11] Dissatisfied with Glickenhaus' work, Chan extensively re-edited the film, re-shot some scenes, and added brand new material written by Edward Tang with the aim of pleasing his established fan base while softening the American director's exploitative style.
[6]: 317–320 In a 1996 interview, Glickenhaus said that he was unfamiliar with the Hong Kong version, but maintained that he had final cut on the picture, and therefore Golden Harvest did not have the right to change it.
[2]: 69–70 However, in 2012, he mentioned that Golden Harvest boss Raymond Chow had asked for his blessing before letting Chan re-cut it, and had even paid him an additional fee for the new version as a courtesy.
[13] In California, the film filled a few dates in the Central Valley during the pre-holiday lull starting on November 22, 1985,[14][15][16] before resurfacing for a drive-in run in Los Angeles and the Bay Area on May 23, 1986.
[24] In North America, Box Office Mojo credits The Protector with a tally of US$981,817 during its limited run,[25] equivalent to around $3 million adjusted for inflation in 2024.
[30][31][32] In that country, Samuel Hadida's Metropolitan Filmexport, then very much an exploitation distributor, bought the rights to Chan's old comedy Half a Loaf of Kung Fu and quickly retitled it Le Protecteur to ride on the release of his new vehicle.
He mentioned the "style and invention" of the action scenes, as well as the "fresh and clean if not terribly high budget look" created by director James Glickenhaus.
"[34] Trade magazine Variety was also positive, writing that the opening speedboat chase "rival[ed] James Bond pictures for elaborate thrills" and that the film was elevated by "the tongue-in-cheek humor running throughout" as well as Chan's "superhuman acrobatics".
[35] Video Review praised "a superior martial-arts-oriented adventure" tailored to bring Chan into the mainstream like Chuck Norris' Code of Silence, but opined that mangled English made it a harder watch than it should have been.
"[37] Jan Herman of the New York Daily News wrote that "[t]he movie opens with vivid scenes in the South Bronx and Manhattan, and a speedboat-cum-helicopter chase down the East River.
[38] Desmond Ryan of The Philadelphia Inquirer criticized Chan's decision to work with the director of The Exterminator, noting that while "Glickenhaus has cleaned up his act somewhat", he still pandered to the audience's "Bernie Goetz fantasies".
He complained about cliches such as villains "involved in the usual dope running" and "a madman armed with a chainsaw", concluding that "The Protector is, by turn, obvious then embarrassing.